Boatbuilding 101

There are quite a few techniques to build a boat, but for my project I'm going to focus my sites on strip-planking.  Explained basically, the procedure for strip-planking consists of: 1) building a frame for the hull, 2) applying strips of wood to the frame, 3) using epoxy resin to seal and stabilize the wooden strip, and 4) fiber-glassing the inner and outer surfaces of the hull.  That's a very simplified explanation, but it gives you the general idea of the process.

The strips of wood can either be bought (expensive) or milled from planks of wood (and not just any planks, as the grain of the wood will effect everything from strength of the hull to warping).  At this point, I'm thinking I'll probably opt to mill my own strips because the cost of pre-milled strips is about 3x as expensive as buying the equivalent amount of lumber.

Epoxy and fiberglass serves to hold the strips together as well as add a significant amount of strength.  Another obvious advantage is that, when done correctly, this process seals the wood from humidity which eliminates many problems inherent in wooden boats.  The cost of the epoxy, by the way, is the most expensive material cost in building a strip-planked boat.

One aspect of boat building that I had not thought much of is that boat building requires a significant amount of lofting.  The lofting charts are a bit more daunting than I expected.  Lofting is basically taking several tables of offsets and converting them into the physical, full-sized form that you construct the frame of the boat from.  Although I could just buy a boat plan that has all the offsets lofted, and Gorman recommends this, I really would like to try my hand at lofting...  The verdict isn't out on this decision yet.

The University of Texas actually has a sailing club that goes on sails every Saturday, and I plan on attending this weekend!  Hopefully there will be a post or two on sailing technique soon...

Take care everyone, and here's the Term of the Day.

Term of the Day: Points of Sail
A boat's point of sail is the direction the sailboat is traveling in relationship to the wind.  First, there is the distinction between a port and starboard tack.  If the wind is coming from the starboard (right) side of the boat, the boat is said to be on a starboard tack.  The reverse is true for a port tack.

From there things get a bit more technical.  Modern sailboats can generally travel up to about 45 degrees into the wind.  If the boat is pointed anywhere within about 45 degrees of the direction of the wind, the boat is said to be in irons, and won't go anywhere.  When a boat is traveling as close to the wind without being in irons, the boat is close hauled.  When traveling at 90 degrees to the wind, the boat is on a beam reach.  Slightly into the wind is a close reach (or fetching), and slightly with the wind is a broad reach.  When the boat is close to moving in the same direction as the wind, the boat is running or running downwind.

  


 




 

All Hands on Deck!... All Four of Them

The amount of time I have for this undertaking is fairly limited, so to help me with some of the grunt work, I've decided to recruit a strong back of similar semenship (hehe) as myself.  My brother Zack (also a college student) will be home for the summer, so he has passionately accepted my offer to join this little project!  With his help, meeting my deadline of August 31st should be quite doable.  Welcome Aboard!

Also, a great breakthrough in the technological realm of this project has been made as well!  While visiting my mother for her birthday, I decided to go talk with her neighbor Gorman.  Gorman is a very intriguing man.  He is fairly tall with a long gray beard.  He looks like he could've very possibly been Merlin in another life, and his demeanor would suggest the same.  He's the kind of person you feel like you should bow to when you greet him, and I'm fairly certain he has single-handedly done in a few dragons in his day .  Most importantly, he had spent several years living on a sailboat in Guam and has built several beautiful boats from scratch.

When I was a kid, Gorman had always invited my brother and I to go sailing with him.  As most people do with golden opportunities, we took his offers for granted and always were "too busy" to accept.  It wasn't until he got older that I realized how interested I was in sailboats, and until recently, I had been too guilty to go talk with him about it.  This weekend, I realized how stupid that mindset was.  How terrible it would be to never learn from him, to let all the knowledge and wisdom he has always been so eager to bestow on me pass away forever.  So, I knocked on his door.

 He answered with that understated hospitality that people in our generation don't have a grasp of.  He offered me some pie and Chris, his wife, poured me some ice tea.  He offered me a seat at their dining table and immediately began telling me about the America's Cup, which is THE sailing competition.  Those guys defy physics; it's truly amazing.  Anyway, what I also found amazing was that he went straight into this without my ever having mentioned why I had paid him a visit.  Granted, this might have been because Mom might've mentioned something to him, but I prefer to think it was telepathy.
Long story short, after talking with him about what I was wanting to do, he handed me a library of books (including The Gougeon Brothers On Boat Construction, The Strip-Built Sea Kayak, and Building Strip-Planked Boats) and offered me his workshop whenever I wanted to get started!  I really don't think I'm worthy of such kindness, but I'm so grateful he thinks so.

You know, our generation really has an issue with thinking we know it all.  Sure, it's typical for people in their twenties to feel on top of the world, but we really are being groomed to think we somehow have all the answers.  The other day, one of my professors went into how he was practically a dinosaur compared to what my generation knows in regards to electronics and the Internet.  Of course, this is from the same guy that went on a rant about how greed is a virtue, but he's not the only professor I've had to tell me that I'm part of some privileged group that doesn't need to listen to the wisdom of my elders.  Sure, I grew up in the Internet age and many older folks aren't too Internet-savvy, but so what?  I've watched so many smart-ass kids my age practically ignore older people in electronics stores because they, OMG, wanted them to explain what a USB cord was.  Every generation has had a technological advance that sets them apart from older generations, but this is the first one that has completely empowered a generation to believe they don't need to heed the wisdom of the people who actually invented all the technology they take for granted... I could go on and on, but you get the point.  Don't take your elders for granted, dammit!

So anyway, the armada is finally coming together a bit.  With an extra set of free hands, time should not be too much of a problem.  Also, I've got some reading to do, but thanks to Gorman I now have enough information to get started really planning out a boat, and I also have the equipment to actually build the boat once summer rolls around.  Unfortunately, I haven't figured out an answer to my financial predicament yet...

I think that's enough for today.  Hopefully I'll finally start to get to all the technical fun of this project soon.  For now, here's the nautical term of the day.

Term of the Day:  Broad in the Beam
If anyone has ever said this about you, you know this isn't exactly a complement.  For those of you who haven't been blessed with this experience, it means you have a big butt, or more correctly, wide hips.  The nautical origin of this phrase can be understood once you know what beam means in a nautical sense.  The beam of a ship is the widest point of a ship.  Also, if something runs parallel to the beam, it is said to run athwartship.

That being said, my new crewman is a bit broad in the beam...



 

The Goal in the Offing

Without setting checkpoints, I've discovered I never get anything done, so the first order of business is setting a short-term goal.

Goal 1:
I will complete my first wooden boat by the end of August 2010.

Problems to overcome:
1. Lack of knowledge. I really need to study up on how to build a boat. I've looked at the basic building techniques, and I think my first project will be a strip-planked boat. Although the most basic technique would be stitch-and-glue, I don't feel like that technique would teach me very much... and it doesn't seem very "legit" to me.

2. Lack of time. I'm a full-time college student, and I plan on going to college this summer. Thanks to picking an awful undergraduate major, I will also have to complete an (unpaid) internship this summer as well. Nevertheless, I will have weekends to work on my boat.

3. Lack of resources. This is probably the biggest problem. I am not independently wealthy, and the money I do have is completely going towards my education. Aside from money, I don't have the equipment or space required for building a boat.

If anyone has ideas as to how I could go about conquering any of these hurdles, fire away! I'll probably go further into depth on each of these issues later.

Also, I think it would be fun to have a nautical word/term of the day, so here's the first one.

Term of the Day: In the Offing
In the offing is a term that is now used by some people to mean "imminent", although I have to admit that I have never used this phrase until this post. The original use of this term is from nautical origins. The offing refers to the area of the ocean that can be seen from shore, so once people on land could see a ship, it was said to be "in the offing" and was likely to dock soon.

The Beginning

This blog will be a journal of my endeavor to learn how to build wooden boats from scratch. As all great (and not-so-great) undertakings do, I have very little to start with. I'm a full-time college student, so that should give you a good idea of where I'm at financially, and as far as woodworking is concerned, I know little more than which side of the saw to cut with.

Why wooden boats: I'll admit that I'm not an extremely "green" person in the hyped-up, chic sense of the term. I like meat ( a lot), and I grew up hunting and fishing. No, I don't get a sadistic thrill out of putting bullets in our cute, fuzzy forest friends, but as I said, I like meat, and I find that a much better way for an animal to live/die than the way most domesticated animals get their ticket punched. Not to mention, if you eat meat, then its blood is on your hands anyway, so deal with it. To the vegetarians in the audience, Kudos! You'll probably live longer than I will.

ANYWAY, let's talk about boats. In all actuality, my motive for learning to build a boat is to learn how to build a sailboat. I love sailboats. There are few things more beautiful than a sailboat on a beam reach, sails full, in perfect harmony with nature. Its the only form of (fairly) dependable transportation that does not require the consuming of resources. I'll admit that I have often dreamed of sailing around the world (or at least across the Atlantic) on a sailboat of my own making.

Unfortunately, I've had about as much experience sailing as I do with woodworking: next to none. So I suppose I have quite a bit of work ahead!

Anchors Aweigh!